Far from Native Soil
by gveret
Summary: They say a terrible beast resides in Luthor Keep. They say none who enters may leave, not unchanged and not without paying a steep price. When her sister disappears, Kara Danvers is determined to save her, whatever that price may be. (A Beauty and the Beast retelling.)
1. Chapter 1

**Warning** for imprisonment, dehumanization, graphic descriptions of injury, brief mentions of suicidal ideation and child abuse.

This fic contains a bunch of nonsensical fantasy pseudoscience and anachronisms. Sorry about that! It's a fairy tale, featuring aliens and witches and the power of love; kindly suspend your disbelief.

 **This is part 1 of 3.** Next part will be up tomorrow. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

* * *

It's been three days now since Alex left for Lane Manor to deliver the chickenpox treatment the Lanes had ordered; three days for a half-day long journey. Alex was supposed to get there and be back by sundown. It's of course possible that she ran late, and was forced to stay there for the night. But it's been a night, and a day, and another night after, and still Alex hasn't returned.

It's true that sometimes Alex isn't the best with directions, but the letter said the manor was quite large and imposing and impossible to miss. This couldn't be a case of Alex simply getting turned around, Kara is convinced. She's sure there must be something more sinister at play.

If she shuts all the curtains and stuffs her nose and closes her eyes and sits still and concentrates, Kara is usually able to pick up Alex's heartbeat even at great distances. But she can't, now. As hard as she strains, she hears nothing. That may simply be because she's finally found the limits of her ability, but she'd really rather not bet on that theory with her sister's life in the balance. Kara puts on her cloak and her spectacles, and packs light, mostly snacks; nails an 'away on business' sign to the front door of their apothecary shop, and heads out.

Kara knows she could get there in minutes if she flew. She could find her sister, throw her over her shoulder, and be back in time for lunch. But she remembers the promise she'd made her new family, the promise meant to keep all of them safe, the promise her cousin was unable to keep, and then…

She sets out on foot.

Kara follows the directions the Lanes had given in their letter, keeping herself focused on the traces of Alex's scent lingering around trees, rocks, the dirt road. She walks for hours, sniffing the ground every once in a while to make sure she's on the right track, hoping nobody is around to notice.

Finally, an enormous, oddly structured building looms over her, and Kara tracks Alex's scent all the way to its gates. Straining her ears, however, still fails to reveal the sound of her sister's heartbeat. Or any sound at all, for that matter. It's almost as if Lane Manor is encased in a pocket of magical silence.

Perhaps that is the case. For all that Kara knows, the Lanes could very well be a family of witches. But why would they require an apothecary's services, if that were the case?

Her heart in her throat and a cold sweat soaking into the back of her shirt, Kara walks up to the massive wooden doors at the manor's entrance, and knocks three times. Seconds pass with no answer.

"Hello?" Kara calls loudly, knocks five times more. "Danvers Remedies here!"

She waits a full minute before trying again, forgoing the brass knocker to slam her fists against the door instead. Her knuckles are much stronger than soft brass. "Please, open up! Are you there? Alex?"

After two more minutes of fruitless pounding, Kara can feel her anxiety mounting, filling her up like liquid, squeezing out her air. She takes a thin, shaky breath, tenses her arms and back, and crashes straight through the heavy doors, smashing them to bits.

And there, right in front of her, sitting folded up in a tattered old armchair, heart beating strong and steady, is Alex Danvers.

"Alex," Kara breathes in relief, climbing to her feet, brushing splinters off her clothes. "Thank Rao."

Alex only stares at her, unmoving for a moment. Then she tenses up even more than before. "No," she chokes out. "No, no no no no…"

"What? What's wrong?"

"Get out! Get out of here right now, Kara, before—"

"What? I'm not leaving. If these Lanes have been keeping you here against your will, I'll—"

Alex laughs, wild and harsh. "This isn't Lane Manor," she says. "Kara, we're inside Luthor Keep."

Kara freezes, stuck mid-protest. _Luthor Keep_. The cursed castle of local legend. The place none who has entered in the past decade had been seen or heard from since. The place where a horrible, man-eating beast is said to reside, waiting patiently for the arrival of its next victim.

The ceiling above their heads creaks loudly, the thump of heavy footfalls following.

"It's coming," Alex says grimly. "Kara, listen to me. Don't believe a word it says. It's tried to manipulate me before. It mimics human mannerisms, it claims to want to help, it will try to gain your cooperation. Don't accept any of its offers. No deal with a demon is ever worth the price."

Alex has barely finished her lecture when a dark shape appears from around the corner, slinking into the fireplace's light.

The beast is as tall as a bear, and nearly as wide. It's covered head to toe in thick, shiny black fur; short, sharp tusks jut from its jaws; long, curved claws adorn each leonine foot. It has horns and a tail and big, hairy ears which flop down, relaxed; and it's wearing a long, tattered brown robe. All in all, it isn't the most terrifying creature Kara has ever seen, nor is its body language the most hostile. She thinks she could handle it just fine.

Alex scrambles to place herself in front of Kara, shielding her, grabbing her wrist and squeezing it in reassurance, or warning. Meanwhile, the beast motions with its front paws, and the heavy doors Kara had broken drift up and repair themselves, sealing the entrance neatly.

Kara gently eases Alex off, and steps forward. "Beast!" Kara announces loudly. "I'd like to strike a deal!"

The beast pauses, leaning back on its hind legs, seeming almost surprised. Next to Kara, Alex groans. Then, training its beady, shining eyes on Kara, the beast nods once, and turns its back on her. Kara follows as it leads her to the uneven, chipped stairway at the end of the room.

"Stop!" Alex calls and springs after them. "Kara, no! Come back here right now! This is your worst idea yet!"

The beast turns its paw, curling its fingers, and the floor at its feet shakes and writhes, surging up to meet the ceiling, creating a solid barrier between Alex and the two of them.

The beast leads her into a room, sealing its entrance too. It takes a snuffling breath, scratches at the fur around the neckline of its robe, and says: "You wished to discuss a proposal with me?"

Kara draws herself up, squaring her shoulders. "I want you to let my sister go," she says, clearly and evenly. "And take me in her place."

The beast lets out a short grunt. "Take you in her place? Of course I can't do that. You fool, walking in of your own volition… You've given up that leverage already."

"Please," Kara says, a hint of desperation slipping into her voice. "I'll do anything you ask, just, please, let Alex go."

The beast rubs its furry face with its great paw. "Wonderful, now I've two of them," it mumbles to itself. "And this one already stinking up the place… Wait," it says, raising its head to pin Kara with its unsettling gaze. "You aren't human." It isn't spoken at all like a question.

Kara lifts her chin. She doesn't feel like this creature is in any particular position to cast judgment. "What of it?"

"Then you aren't, truly? I…" The wrinkles in the beast's face shift and deepen, something flashing in its eye; for a moment, Kara sees something unbearably familiar in it. "I'm sorry. I might be able to grant your request. Your captivity in exchange for your sister's. But I think… perhaps I shouldn't."

"You must!" Kara exclaims. "Please, you have to release her! I can't… she's the only reason I'm even alive. And she... she has a future outside of here, a good one, and I… I don't… I just want her to be _happy_."

The beast closes its eyes for a long moment, a gesture Kara would associate with empathy if that weren't completely ludicrous given the circumstances. "Very well," says the beast. "But know this: you will never leave this place. You will _never_ be with your sister again."

"I understand," Kara says. "I'll accept those terms."

The beast waves its paw and the walls tear themselves apart again, creating a misshapen, bloated entryway between them. "Say your goodbyes now, and quickly. After we start, you might not be able to speak to her."

"After we start?"

The beast nods grimly, shifting on its feet; its shoulders straighten, its fangs flash, the sheer mass of it coming into full relief, and suddenly, for the first time since she's stepped foot inside this cursed place, a shiver of real fear runs down Kara's spine. "After we start," the beast repeats, "the bloodletting process."

Kara stumbles back out of the chamber before her body can react further, angry at herself for this fear, this weakness she absolutely cannot afford to show.

.

Alex grabs her as soon as she sees her, attempting to give her a shake, but managing to move only her clothing.

"Kara! What did you _do_!" she demands frantically.

"Alex, it's all right, I'm getting you out of here," Kara says. "It's going to be okay."

"What did you promise it?" Alex demands. Kara hesitates. "Kara! What did you bargain away?"

"I promised to stay here," Kara admits. "In your place." She opts not to mention the bloodletting.

It's a good decision; already, Alex looks like she's ready for murder. "No," Alex says definitively, shaking her head. "No."

" _Yes_ ," Kara rebuts cleverly.

"If you think I'm going to leave you here with that monster—"

Kara scoffs. "That thing is barely the size of a grizzly cub. What does it have, some teeth and sharp nails, made of calcium and keratin? Even under a red sun it would pose no threat to me."

"Magic, Kara! It has _magic_."

"Well, I have _superpowers_."

"I won't let you do this," Alex says, almost menacingly.

Kara smiles a little. Her sister truly is terrifying. "Alex, shut up," she tells her. "Hug me."

Alex looks for a moment like she might refuse, and keep arguing. But Kara knows her sister. Bit by bit, Alex softens, reaching out to enfold Kara in a tight, wholehearted hug.

The beast reappears some minutes later, and Kara eases carefully out of the hug, kisses Alex's cheek, and, doing her best to ignore Alex's increasingly desperate protests, turns to follow the beast to her uncertain fate.

.

The beast leads her to its laboratory, directs her to sit down on the single bed and swabs her arm with alcohol. As soon as it approaches her with a syringe, however, it discovers the hitch in its plan.

"Ah," the beast says unhappily. "Impenetrable skin. You might have mentioned."

Kara shrugs.

The beast turns with a billow of its robe, walking over to a desk at the edge of the room, grinding and chopping and mixing several ingredients over a small flame. It returns to Kara with a small vial, which appears even tinier in its beastly paws.

"Drink this," it directs. "It will imbue your skin with just enough sympathetic magic for me to be able to pierce it. It will also put you to sleep, so there won't be pain."

"I'd rather stay awake," Kara protests.

"I'm afraid that's not a possibility, if you wish to survive the operation with magic under your skin."

Reluctantly, Kara accepts the offered vial, and takes a long whiff. Its scent is surprisingly subtle and fragrant, like a very light tea or fruit-infused water, nothing as potent and foul as a witch's potion is meant to be, or even any of the sleeping solutions Kara's ever concocted herself. She detects apple blossom and char and something refreshing and unfamiliar that must be magic, but no hint of opium or any poison she's familiar with.

Kara sighs. She has no hope of divining the magic's purpose, she knows very little of these things. At this point she's already placed herself completely at the beast's mercy. The only available path is forward. She downs the potion in a single swig.

"You swear you will let Alex go?" she asks the beast intently.

"If I am successful, when you awaken, your sister will be gone."

As Kara's eyelids grow heavy and she feels her consciousness fade, she thinks to ask, "Gone as in 'not here, but alive', right? This isn't one of those word play things?"

The beast carries on with its task preparing for Kara's possible demise, seemingly disinclined to respond, even as Kara's eyes close and her senses numb.

Kara remembers, perhaps in a dream, a deep, strange, regretful voice: " _I can only hope_."

.

.

.

Kara wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, to a fiercely aching head, the smell of herbs and blood and dust in the air, and some terrible, grating sound coming from the other side of the door. Her arm hurts, too. It's been a long while since the last time she'd been physically hurt.

Opening her eyes sends a shooting pain through her temples. She waits for her vision to clear to take stock of her surroundings. The lab looks much as it did—yesterday? Kara has no way of knowing how long she's been out. The clock on the wall shows the hour 7:15, but longer examination reveals that its hands aren't moving.

The work station where the beast had made Kara the potion is stacked with vials, jars and various chemist's equipment. Another table is equipped with a metalsmith's tools. A large glass cabinet is filled with an assortment of small contraptions. On the wall across from the bed, partially hidden behind a tall armchair, hangs a well crafted painting, depicting a pale, grim-looking family: two adults and two children. The original owners of the castle, presumably.

Kara turns her attention to herself. She flexes her fingers and her toes, bends her knees, tests her x-ray and heat vision and her freeze breath. All functional. Good. No paralysis or long term damage to her powers. She can rarely allow herself to use them, but it's a comfort to know she has all her powers in this strange and hostile place.

Kara's only injury appears to be her arm, which hurts, but not as badly as her head. It's also been cleaned and neatly bandaged.

Carefully, Kara props herself on her elbows and tries to straighten into a sitting position. She's instantly hit with an intense wave of vertigo. Damn. How much blood could the beast have taken?

Getting up on her feet takes two attempts. Once she's up, her head throbs all the harder, and she has to lean one hand against the wall to make sure she remains upright. Rao. Kara's never in her life felt so vulnerable.

Opening the heavy lab door reveals the source of the grating sound that woke her, though if anything solving this particular mystery only makes Kara feel even more off-balance. Balled up just outside the door, a small pool of drool soaking into the knee of its robe, rests the beast, snoring noisily.

"Hey," Kara says loudly. "Hey, wake up."

The beast snores on. It sounds awful up close. Like chalk being used as a saw. Kara is surprised it hadn't woken her sooner.

"Wake up," she calls, stern. No response.

Steeling herself, she extends one foot to poke the beast's leg with the tip of her toe.

"Wuh—? Not the jellybeans!" the beast exclaims, and jumps to its feet, blinking owlishly at Kara.

"All right, I'll leave the jellybeans alone," Kara says dryly.

The beast passes its paw over the side of its head, as if to tuck hair behind an ear. The motion appears to accomplish nothing. "I," it says, and stops. "Hello. Good morning."

Kara stares at it pointedly. She has no intention of making small talk with Luthor Keep's beast.

It seems to recognize her impatience. It clears its throat. It sounds somewhat like a rooster being throttled. "I apologize for the ambush," says the beast. "I didn't wish to intrude, but I needed to make sure I spoke to you as soon as you awoke."

Kara ignores all that. There's only one thing she cares to know that this creature can tell her. "Where's Alex?"

The beast motions to the lab. "Let's… let's sit down, please." Rather than argue and prolong the wait, Kara complies, sitting down on the cot while the beast takes the only armchair. "Your sister is safe," the beast tells her then, "but slightly injured."

" _What_? You said—"

"Very slightly! Only very slightly," the beast interjects loudly. Its manner appears almost… embarrassed. "She wouldn't leave on her own. I was forced to—encourage her."

"What did you do to her?" Kara demands.

The beast clicks its talons on the edge of the table. "I'll show you," it says, and leaves the room.

A short while later the beast reappears, and hands Kara a small, blackened silver mirror. "Here." It touches its finger to the tarnished mirror's face, and the reflection ripples and shifts.

Kara squints into it, blinking until the image settles. Rather than a likeness of her face, the mirror shows a person, struggling with a beast. Not a person— _Alex_. They stand in front of the heavy wooden doors at the castle's entrance; they'd been thrown wide open, and snow is drifting inside, catching on Alex's robes and melting on her skin. Alex has each of the beast's thick forearms in a white-knuckled grip; she's scowling fiercely and shoving at it, but it won't budge. Only, the beast isn't barring the entrance, preventing Alex from escaping; rather, it appears to be trying to push her outside.

The struggle continues for some minutes more, until finally the beast grows slack in Alex's hold, and Alex manages to push it back a step. It then shifts to the side, and Alex overbalances, loosening her grip on one of its arms; it immediately takes advantage of this momentary stumble to lift its thick fist in the air and bring it down on the back of Alex's head.

"She was only unconscious," the beast informs Kara quietly. "I checked."

And indeed, in the mirror, the beast bends down to press the rough pad of one monstrous finger to the side of Alex's neck, then holds its palm over her mouth to feel her breath. Satisfied, it straightens, grabbing Alex beneath her armpits and dragging her to the open doors. However, as soon as the beast's elbow pokes outside into the open air, there's a flash of bright light, and the beast drops Alex and stumbles away, jaws open in a silent howl, smoke emanating from its fur.

Kara glances up, and sure enough, even now there's a patch of singed, mottled fur at the beast's elbow.

The beast disappears from the image in the mirror, leaving Alex crumpled on the ground partway out the castle doors. It returns some moments later. With a broom. Kara watches, feeling numb and stupid from the medicated sleep, the stress, the aftereffects of adrenaline, as the beast crouches down and sweeps Alex out into the snow like so much kitchen debris, using an old household _broom_.

She watches as the beast closes and bolts the door, turning to rest its back against it; watches as Alex wakes up a few minutes later, scrambles to her feet, bangs and shoves and throws herself at the doors; watches as the beast turns its head, growling something inaudible, and as Alex continues until she's bruised and bleeding, until the sun sets and the snow piles up to her shins and deep shivers shake her frame. She watches as the beast calls something through the door, and as Alex bares her teeth, shakes her head, crying tears which freeze on her cheeks. Finally, she stops pounding at the door, resting her cheek against it instead, shoulders slumping, the picture of defeat.

She says something, and Kara curses the mirror for providing no sound, curses herself for never learning to read lips. The image of the beast in the mirror responds, and slowly, slowly, Alex detaches herself from the doors, and picks herself up, and walks away. She stops once to say one last thing over her shoulder, and is gone.

Kara looks up from the mirror to find the beast watching her silently, completely still, a patient predator lying in wait. It looks blurry and distorted, and Kara blinks to clear the tears from her eyes. They leave warm trails down her cheeks. Here in the castle, the frost outside doesn't touch her.

"What did she tell you?" Kara asks the beast. Her voice comes out stuffy and rough.

"She warned me not to hurt you," it says neutrally. "And she promised she'll be back."

"But she can't come back," Kara says desperately. That noble idiot, of course she'd plan to get herself imprisoned again. "Can she?"

"She can't reenter the castle after leaving it once," the beast confirms. "But she can certainly attempt to freeze herself to death out on the front lawn."

"If she comes again, could I speak to her? Like you did, through the door?"

The beast shakes its head. "She won't hear you," it says. "Nothing gets out of the castle without a sacrifice, not even sound. Mine only carries because I am part of this place, but even my voice cannot travel beyond the walls. Your sister could only hear me by pressing her ear to the door, catching the vibrations directly."

Kara looks down at the mirror, where Alex is trudging steadily through the endless snow, one step at a time.

The beast makes a loud snuffling sound; its monstrous version of a sigh, perhaps. "Would you like to keep it?" it asks; Kara looks up at it sharply. "The mirror, I mean. It can show you anything you wish. Anything in this world that is or ever was."

Kara clutches the mirror in her hands. Like everything else in this place, ugly but magical. "Yes," she answers the beast's question.

The beast nods. "I must warn you," it says. "Everything the mirror shows is real, but none of it is possible for you now. Down the road of fruitless yearning only pain awaits."

Again, that feeling of numb, surreal incredulity washes over Kara; a feeling like she could laugh at the absurdity of this situation, the hilarity of an enormous ugly beast delivering grave, melodramatic words of advice, chasing away Kara's family with a straw-headed broom. Instead, she's crying helpless tears, clutching a magic fucking mirror in this magic fucking castle that's to be her prison for the rest of her possibly very short life.

The beast watches her quietly, blinking dumbly for long moments. "I'm sorry," it says at length. "I think you are likely in shock. You've lost so much today, your family and your freedom. Your whole life, really. I know that I'm to blame. I'm sorry."

It's Kara's turn to blink wordlessly, uncomprehending.

"I understand if you don't trust in my sincerity, but I want you to know I won't hurt you. Not intentionally, and likely not at all. More than I already have, I mean." The beast drums its claws against its leg, a shockingly unbeastly gesture. "I think I should probably leave you alone for now. I'll answer your questions tomorrow, if you'd like. You should stay in this room for the night. All right?"

Kara can't think of any kind of response. The tear tracks on her cheeks have started to dry and itch, yet she cannot summon the will to move at all.

"I'm sorry," the beast says again, rising to its feet, its chair groaning. At the door, the beast turns to Kara. "Good night, My Lady." And then the beast... curtsies. Bending its large, inelegant body at the knees, gripping the edge of its robe in its claws.

Kara stares after it even as it leaves the room and shuts the door softly behind it. It thinks she's still in shock, it said. Perhaps she is. She feels unbalanced and vague, and bewildered most of all. The more she learns of this creature and its castle, the less she feels she understands them.

She slumps back on the bed, picking up the mirror and watching Alex's image sharpen her old axe with a whetstone. Does she plan to hack Kara's way out of here? The thought makes her chuckle.

Maybe Kara should be working on an escape attempt of her own. But she can still feel the magic tingling under her skin, pressing down on her from all sides; better wait at least until she's recovered completely, and ideally has a better understanding of the workings of this place.

Instead, she opens the glass cabinet, and examines the pieces of machinery inside. An herb grinder, a simple mechanism that threads needles, what appears to be a small windup automatic broom. Quite impressive craftsmanship for a monster with such unwieldy paws.

She spends an unknown amount of time taking the various devices apart and putting them back together, her respect for the beast's skill growing with each complex, delicate mechanism that's revealed, and falls asleep at the beast's worktable.

.

.

Kara is woken the next morning by a soft knock on the laboratory's door. If she had a human's hearing, the sound likely wouldn't be enough to wake her at all. She takes advantage of this fact to feign sleep and ignore it. If the beast wants her attention, it can work harder for it.

It doesn't seem to be inclined to do that, however. Rubbing the sleep from eyes, Kara uses her x-ray vision to watch the beast lay a small object down on the other side of the door, and leave. Minutes pass, and it doesn't return. Meanwhile, the smell of fresh coffee and syrup and baked goods fills up the entire room.

Carefully, Kara opens the door to reveal a tray piled high with breakfast foods: toasted bread and muffins and sliced fruit and coffee, some sort of bean spread, and a liquid that looked like milk at first glance, but upon sampling proves to be made of nut paste and water instead. Kara opts to leave that one aside, and devours the rest.

It doesn't take her long to begin feeling restless in the small lab; she takes a deep breath, steels herself, and opens the door.

The beast isn't sleeping outside the room, this time. Instead, it's curled up in the very same armchair Kara had found Alex in when she first entered this cursed place.

"Oh! Hello!" the beast says at Kara's approach, scrambling to its feet. "I was hoping to have a short talk with you before you got out and about."

"Out and about," Kara repeats. "Not quite the words I'd use."

The beast makes a breathy sound—its beastly version of a chuckle, perhaps, or a huff of impatience. It gestures to the wide room with a paw. "This is the main foyer," it says. "As you can probably tell. The kitchen is that way, the functioning bathroom is on the second floor, although there are several less functioning ones, if you're interested. The library is on the second floor as well. The laboratory, is, of course, where you've just been sleeping, so I assume you remember where it is?"

"I'm not sure. Remind me?"

"Oh, it's over there, right behind you," the beast says helpfully, pointing. "You're welcome to wander freely, of course, and claim any of the rooms as your own," it continues. "My private chambers are at the east end of the third floor. I keep them sealed, but if they aren't, please don't enter. The castle is large enough I think for both of us. If you're hungry, just go to the kitchens. I will make sure to cook for two. Leftovers will be left in the ice box. I'd appreciate if you cleaned up after yourself, but I suppose I can wash up for you if you'd rather not, I certainly have the time. Just leave the dishes in the sink if you don't mind. If you need to reach me for any reason, whisper your request to the furniture or the walls, they'll make sure I receive the message. The laundry—"

"Hold on," Kara interrupts the lecture; the beast stops mid word, its mouth hanging comically open. To her shock, Kara finds herself struggling to contain a snort. "What do I call you?"

The beast closes its jaws with a clink of teeth. It blinks at Kara for a moment, its monstrous features slack, softened. "Lena," it says, quiet, strangely solemn. "Please, call me Lena."

"Lena," Kara repeats mindlessly, and the thought hits her all at once—obvious, it should have been so obvious, but she'd been scared, and angry, and desperate, and never considered the possibility that— "Were you once a person, Lena?"

Lena laughs a croaky, alien laugh, neither human nor Kryptonian. "I was a woman, once," she says. "Actually, I like to think I am one, still."

"Did you eat those people? In the pictures?"

"Did I eat them? Lex and Mom?" She laughs again. "I wish. But no. I don't eat people, I promise you that. Not animals either, for that matter."

"Huh," says Kara. "If you don't need me here to eat, what do you need me here for?"

Lena frowns at her. "I'm explaining this all out of order, aren't I?" she says, her ears twitching. As humanizing as these past few exchanges have been, Kara is reminded that she's still a beast. "I'm sorry. I'm not used to speaking to people, or out loud, particularly. My name is Lena Luthor. I'm under a curse. This castle as well. My mother, Lillian Luthor, placed this curse on us. Uh. The curse ties me to this building, physically and spiritually. We're connected, and I can't leave. I can control various aspects of this environment, though. Watch."

Lena flick her paw—hand?—and the ceiling tears itself apart, a rectangular object slipping through the gap and landing with a thump on the floor by Lena's clawed feet. She leans over to pick it up. The ceiling seals itself back up with a disconcertingly organic-sounding noise.

"It's a cookbook," Lena says. "That's not very interesting. Do you want it?" she asks Kara.

"I don't think so," Kara says dazedly.

"Do you like books?"

"Some of them." This conversation is getting more and more disorienting by the second. "Have you got any astronomy texts?"

"I do," says Lena, sounding pleased. "That reminds me. Which planet are you from?"

"I don't mind telling you," Kara says, trying to keep her voice calm and even. "But I'd really like to know to what purpose I'm here, why you wanted my blood, and why I cannot leave."

Lena straightens up at that. "Of course," she says hurriedly. "I'm sorry. It's been—a while since anyone was here. And then… then it hadn't gone very well."

"I'd like to know about that too," Kara tells her firmly. "And I'd like you to use less vague terms than 'didn't go very well'."

"You're right. I apologize. The last person who'd come here had died," says Lena. A beat of silence passes between them. A chill runs down Kara's spine. "But that's the wrong order again. To answer your questions: You aren't here for any particular purpose. You're here by unfortunate accident, I assume. I don't really know what brought your sister here, but I promise you it wasn't me. You can't leave because no one who sets foot in this castle can. It's part of my mother's curse. As to her reason for that particular flourish… I don't know. Maybe she didn't want me to be lonely. She always had shown her affection in the most painful and destructive ways."

"And my blood?" Kara presses.

"When I said no one can leave… that's inaccurate. You approached me asking for a bargain, so I assumed you knew this. Leaving is possible, but it requires a suitable sacrifice that will satisfy the echo my mother left in these walls. Your blood—alien blood—is a very good sacrifice. It's thanks to you that your sister was able to escape the curse as whole as she had." Lena glances at her, her ears perking up. "I can show you the room where I splattered your blood on the walls, if you'd like."

"Huh," Kara says again. "Not at the moment, thanks."

"Would you mind, I have a question of my own," Lena says carefully.

"Yeah?"

She hesitates for a brief moment, the long slits of her nostrils flaring with a deep breath. Finally, she asks: "What is your name?"

Kara feels herself tense. "It's Kara," she says slowly, unsure exactly how this admission could put her in any more of a disadvantage, but feeling that it would, nonetheless. "Kara Danvers."

"Kara," the beast murmurs, as if this name is of some awful significance to her, and Kara feels her tension rise. "May I call you Kara?"

"I—yeah?" Kara says, not sure what to think of that question. It should be obvious that she isn't some sort of noble or any such thing that would require the use of a title, she thinks.

But Lena says, "Thank you," ever so softly and slightly breathless, like she's received a precious gift. " _Kara_."

.

.

Kara spends the next few days quietly exploring, managing somehow to avoid running into Lena altogether. She wonders whether Lena spends one hundred percent of her time locked in her room, to seem so absent in what is essentially a rather large and luxurious prison. And yet, every day there's fresh food in the kitchen, new clothes in the laundry, washed dishes drying on the rack. Lena must simply be rather skilled at avoidance.

Kara isn't quite sure what to think of that. Lena is a strange and slightly unsettling conversationalist, and she might very well be manipulating Kara and keeping her captive for some sinister clandestine purpose. Kara has no reason to take her at her word when she claims to be under a curse, conveniently absolved of any culpability in Kara's imprisonment. She might be lying. She just might be the sort of person who is gifted with the ability to lie so _awkwardly_ that they appear painfully sincere.

And if Kara is lonely, if she misses her sister, if she aches with the need to talk to someone, out loud, a lot—well, she has a magic mirror, and a magic castle to explore, and magic furniture that appear sometimes to move, and otherwise don't mind being spoken to.

Five days into her stay, there's one thing she realizes she can't postpone any longer, though she's been trying to avoid it. But the odor really has become uncomfortable by this point. Kara has no choice; it's time to suck it up, and go take a shower.

On her search for the bathroom, the thought strikes her that perhaps Lena's been avoiding her by her sense of smell alone. Kara chuckles to herself. She had mentioned something about Kara's stench at one point. Kara conjures up an image of Lena, fanged and large and looming, wrinkling her nose daintily and spraying the air with some subtly floral perfume. The idea is surprisingly endearing.

The bathroom, like all the rest of the castle, is huge and garishly decorated and not particularly well maintained. But there's running water, and it isn't below freezing temperature, and those are two things Kara could never say about the bathing situation back home—not since Krypton, at least. There are also clumps of black fur gathered around the drain. Something about that fact is oddly endearing, too.

"Don't think I'll clean up after you, just because you make me breakfast," Kara says to the empty room. "And lunch, and dinner. And dessert, once." She really, really likes Lena's cooking, actually.

Sighing, she scoops up the fur, and throws it in the bin at the corner of the room. She wonders what Lena does with all the waste. If nothing escapes the castle, it must all still be in here. A decade's worth of garbage. Is there a special trash dungeon somewhere around, filled with banana peels and used paper and… other sorts of waste? Does Lena _compost_?

For that matter, where does the water go? If none comes in and none goes out, there must water filtration and circulation systems in place. Kara closes her eyes and listens carefully. She can hear the used bathwater flowing beneath her feet. She follows the sound to a room filled almost entirely by a large device, connected to several copper pipes. She can hear water churning inside the machine. This might be some sort of sanitation device.

The pipes branching out from it all lead in different directions. One turns downward, likely headed for the kitchen. Another is headed up. Kara decides to follow that one. She hasn't had occasion to explore the upper floors yet.

She traces the pipe all the way to one of the castle's spires; she wonders how Lena managed to get the water pressure strong enough to get it to flow that high. This system is cleverer than she'd assumed.

Sunlight is streaming out of an open doorway. Kara steps inside, and has to stop and stare. This room isn't a room at all; it's a garden.

The floor is covered in soil from end to end, dotted with flowers and bushes and plants. Tall trees cast shade in the corners. There are platforms layered over each other, carrying more earth and vegetation. Hanging from the ceiling are wide metal nets, weaved through with colorful vines. And in the middle of this mess of life and color and beauty, crouching in the soil, is Lena, wearing a bright yellow apron and inexpertly stitched gloves and holding a tiny little trowel.

She looks up. They stare at each other for a moment. "Ah," Lena says finally, in far too dignified a tone for her frankly ridiculous appearance. "Hello."

"What is this place?" Kara asks, her voice laced with wonder despite herself.

"My garden," Lena says simply.

"It's… incredible."

"My greatest achievement," Lena agrees fondly. "It's my sole source of nourishment. If I didn't have this garden, I'd likely die of starvation. Or possibly the curse's magic could sustain me, but then I'd just die of boredom. Probably half my time is spent either cooking or eating or working here. I don't know how I'd entertain myself otherwise. I can't really take up embroidery." She flexes her hands; the sharp points of her claws poke out through the material of her gloves.

Lena's never used such a light and silly tone with her before. Kara is startled into laughter, and Lena smiles at her shyly, exposing rows of white fangs.

Kara really can't help returning the smile. "Well," she says. "Wanna give me the tour?"

Lena's whole body perks up at that. She definitely, definitely does, it appears.

Lena's garden is truly incredible. It has apple and almond trees, tomato and maize plants, rows of beans and lentils and chickpeas, little bushes of mint and basil and coriander, cauliflower and potatoes and watermelon and oats. They spend the rest of the day in the garden, and Kara leaves it with an armful of herbs, nuts and fruit at Lena's insistence.

.

.

Eight days into Kara's imprisonment, she's awoken by a deafening, metallic banging sound. Sticking her finger in one ear, she scrambles to shove her spectacles back on her face. With her senses free and unhampered, the noise is pure torture. Even with the enchanted glasses, it's almost unbearable.

Kara stumbles out of her room in search of the source. She follows the noise to the castle's entrance, where somebody is somehow thrashing the doors with a very heavy and loud object, without damaging them at all.

"Hey!" Kara shouts over the noise. "Stop that!"

There's no response, and the hacking continues. Kara recalls Lena telling her that sound doesn't travel outside the castle. Covering her ears with her hands and leaning her forehead on her bent knees, rocking back and forth slightly, Kara wishes the reverse were true as well.

Finally, the awful banging sound stops, replaced by harsh breathing. The person on the other side must have tired themselves out.

A long moment passes. And then, "Kara!" the person calls.

Kara jumps to her feet. "Alex?!" she exclaims, pressing up against the doors.

"Kara! Are you there?" Alex continues, oblivious. "Can you hear me? Kara!"

"I'm here," Kara says desperately, clinging to the door. "I'm right here, Alex, I hear you."

"I guess not," Alex says. "I'm so sorry, Kara. I can't break this door, no matter how I try. The axe doesn't even leave a scratch."

"It's okay. You'll get me out of here, I know you will." Kara presses an open palm to the door, willing Alex to sense her presence. "I believe in you."

"I'm not giving up on you, Kara. Do you hear me? I'm never giving up on you!" Alex screams.

Kara bangs her hands on the door, clenching them into fists, longing, frustrated tears running down her face. What she would give only for Alex to _hear_ her.

"Kara, don't worry! I'll be back! With a _bigger_ axe!" Alex vows. "Wait for me, do you hear? Don't you dare die. I love you. Wait for me."

"I will," Kara whispers. "I will. I will."

She waits until she hears the soft scuffs of Alex's fading footsteps, then slides down the door, and cries.

.

.

Kara spends the entirety of her ninth day in the castle curled up in bed, watching Alex harvest flowers, sort herbs and brew medicines through the magic mirror Lena had given her.

She wakes up the next morning to half a dozen bouquets of beautiful, fragrant flowers and an overflowing breakfast tray waiting outside her door.

.

.

The next day, Kara wakes early, and scurries quickly to the kitchen, intending to ambush Lena. When she enters, however, she finds Lena already there, chopping and whisking and grating various things.

Kara walks up behind her, peering at her handiwork. "What are you making?" she asks.

Lena jumps. For a big scary monster with such impressive ears, her awareness of her surroundings is abysmal. "Oh," she says faintly. "Hello, Kara." She still says Kara's name as if the syllables have some secret meaning. "I'm making lentil stew, eggplant casserole, garlic roasted squash, carrot cake, sunflower seed bread, and pancakes."

Kara whistles. "And what's for dinner?"

Lena looks distressed, mixing the batter in the bowl she's holding faster. "They are for dinner. Most of them, I mean. Not the pancakes. I always cook in the mornings. If you prefer your food fresh—"

"No, no, Lena, that was a joke," Kara hurriedly cuts in with a chuckle. "Sorry. That was such a long list of food, that's all."

"Oh." Lena puts down the bowl and picks up a plate. "I see."

"Thank you for the food this past week," Kara says sincerely. "I've wanted to tell you this for a while. You're a really good cook."

"That—You really think so?" Lena asks, clutching the plate to her chest. It looks like a tiny saucer in her hands.

Kara nods enthusiastically. "You're amazing. Chemistry is my stock-in-trade, but I'm hopeless in the kitchen. Alex wouldn't let me brew tea for fear I'd burn it."

A short, throaty sound escapes Lena. It takes Kara a second to recognize it as a laugh. "No one's ever complimented my cooking before," Lena says. "Well, not too many have tried it, I suppose. My brother used to—Ah." She cuts herself off, and angles her body away from Kara. The folds of her face deepen in a frown, and her ears droop.

Kara is surprised how much easier reading Lena's body language has become. So, there's a brother. And a painful history there. Kara had guessed as much, assuming the stiff family in the paintings really was Lena's.

Kara has no intention of poking old wounds, though. "Could you show me how you do it?" she asks lightly, as if the conversation had never stalled. "I've never seen anyone cook using nothing but plant matter before. I'd like to learn."

Lena looks surprised. "Sure," she says at length, and gestures to a bowl of legumes covered in water. "See, I've soaked the dried lentils overnight so that they'll cook faster. Now I'm simply sautéing some onions, garlic and carrots, and then I'll add the lentils and spices, cover with boiling water and let it simmer for an hour. After that..."

Kara feels herself lose interest almost immediately, the words washing over her without bothering to process them. Perhaps this isn't the right way to approach this. She waits for what she deems an appropriate lull in the conversation, and interrupts.

"Lena," she says. "You don't have to keep avoiding me, you know."

Lena turns her head, refusing to meet Kara's gaze. "I'd like you to feel as comfortable and secure here as feasible. No one wants to be constantly hounded by their captor."

"I don't want to think of you like that," Kara tells her resolutely. "I _don't_ think of you like that."

Lena keeps her back to Kara, chopping carrots silently for a long moment. Kara lets her.

Finally, she rests her knife. "You're a chemist, you said," Lena says quietly. She glances at Kara over her shoulder, and Kara nods in answer. "I tend to my garden every midday, afternoon, and evening. You could, if you'd like, at any time, uh. Join me. If that's something you want. I'm sure there's a great deal I could learn from you."

Kara feels a slow smile spread across her face. "I'd like that," she says. "Now give me that knife. I may not be a great cook, but I am very talented at tearing things apart."

Lena gives her a long look, then picks up the knife by its blade, presenting it to Kara handle-first.

As Kara takes it, she feels as if something passes between them. Possibly just a bit of static electricity.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2! AKA: in which they hug a lot. Part 3 will be up tomorrow or the day after. Thanks so much for your readership!

 **Warning** for very graphic descriptions of injury in this chapter.

* * *

The days pass in relative quiet. Kara has developed a sort of routine. She wakes up naturally with the sun, joins Lena in the kitchen to help her cook (by a very broad definition of _'helping'_ ), and then either explores the castle or works in the garden or stays in the lab, which Kara has commandeered as her own, creating.

This afternoon, Kara's chosen the latter. She's nearly finished working on the machine she's designed when Lena knocks on her door.

At Kara's invitation to come in, Lena pokes her head inside and peers at Kara's work. "What are you making?"

"It's a steam-powered automated shaving razor." Kara turns to her with a grin. "Would you like to be my first test subject? I could give you a cool undercut."

Lena wrinkles her nose. "No, thanks."

"Are you sure? Maybe you're in more of bowl cut mood? Or how about a tonsure? You could join a monastery."

Lena has begun backing away from her, shaking her head with a silly and slightly scared grin on her face; Kara follows. "Come on," she coaxes. "I'll draw a bald flower on the back of your head. You like flowers, don't you, Lena?"

Kara pounces on her, and Lena yelps, openly running away now, on all fours, laughing. Kara chases her around the staircase and all the way to the kitchen, backing her into a corner. Lena lifts her hands in the air, giggling madly.

"You win, you win!" she wheezes. "Please, make the flower something nice, a plumeria maybe."

Kara advances menacingly towards her, brandishing the shaving device threateningly. When she reaches Lena, she drops it on the counter and pounces on Lena in a hug instead. "It isn't working yet," Kara admits, settling herself in Lena's lap and winds her arms around her neck.

As she usually does, Lena tenses in Kara's arms for a moment before reciprocating. Lena's arms cover almost the entirety of Kara's back; being hugged by her is like sinking into a very soft and furry pouf.

They stay like that for a few long seconds, until the warmth finally becomes uncomfortable and Kara gently disentangles herself, flashing Lena an appreciative grin in thanks for the hug. She assumes Lena has some level of discomfort with physical contact by the way she always stiffens at first, but she really does give very good hugs.

"Will you tell me a bit about the technology on your home planet?" Lena asks once they've both sat down at the kitchen table, pouring them two cups of unsweetened herbal tea.

Kara takes one sip, cringes, and reaches for the date honey. "There's no technology there anymore," Kara says. "It was all destroyed, along with the planet."

Lena grimaces sympathetically. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks," Kara says. "It was a long time ago, I was too young to join the science guild at the time. But I have a lot of memories of my studies, and the things the adults around me were working on. Incredible things. Teletransportation and faster than light travel and instant communication across solar systems. We were on the brink of harnessing thermal energy, converting it into electricity. That would have revolutionized the whole _universe's_ energy consumption."

"Dealing with the loss of just that must be terribly painful," Lena says. "I feel mournful, hearing it."

"It is," says Kara. It's a constant, unwavering pain that she carries always. There's really nothing else to it.

"Could you show me?" Lena asks her. "Some of the things you remember how to do?"

Kara smiles at her, touched. "I did only receive elementary education," she says. "But I could show you how to make a stink bomb from some matches and old urine."

Lena barks out a surprised laugh. "Sounds awful," she says happily. "Let's do it."

.

.

The second time the castle's stillness is interrupted by relentless clanging, Kara has a plan. She's not going to let Alex go on imagining the worst. This time, she's actually going to talk to her.

"Lena," Kara whispers to the wall, "I need you. Please come."

The clashing of Alex's axe continues as she tries to hack into the door again and again. The wood doesn't so much as tremble. "I'm coming for you, Kara," Alex is saying, gentle and unwavering. "I hope you can hear me, wherever you are. I'll get you of there if it's the last thing I do."

Lena enters the room then, looking over the scene warily.

"It's Alex," Kara says unnecessarily. "Lena, please. I have to talk to her."

Lena's jaw sets. She nods at Kara once, and walks up to the doors. "Alex," she says, loud and clear.

A loud gasp comes from the other side of the door. "How do you know my name, you monster?" Alex snarls, her tone immediately transformed. She sounds truly terrifying. "Where's my sister? What have you done with her?"

"She's right next to me," Lena says, voice calm and placating, but her eyes are wide. "She's perfectly fine. She's been listening to you this whole time."

"You liar!" Alex accuses. "Why can't I hear her? Have you taken her tongue so she can't cry for help? Have you locked her up in your dungeon to rot? Answer me!"

"Alex," Lena says evenly. "Would you step back so I may open the doors? Kara is right here. I'll show you. Please."

"You have no right to speak her _name_ , you vile, filthy—"

Lena sighs and motions the doors open anyway. Kara watches, nauseous with impatience and already on the edge of tears, as Alex is revealed, real and whole and furious, stumbling back from the heavy doors swinging toward her.

"Alex," Kara murmurs; she can't help springing forward, reaching for her sister, only to jump away with a yelp as the doorway flashes white, burning her fingers.

"Kara!" Alex shouts, rushing to her, banging on the invisible barrier of the doorway. At least it doesn't appear to burn on that side. "Kara! What happened? What happened to you? Are you all right?"

"I'm okay, Alex," Kara says, even though Alex can't hear her. "I forgot about the curse for a moment." Her fingertips throb, but Kara can feel the pain receding by the second, her accelerated healing kicking in.

"I see your lips moving. Why can't I hear you?" Alex asks desperately. "Has that thing truly ripped out your tongue?"

Kara shakes her head vehemently. She brushes the tears from eyes to clear her vision, looks at Alex for a long moment, holding her gaze, until Alex gives a slight nod. She understands. She'll listen.

Kara points deliberately at Lena, then gives Alex an exaggerated thumbs up.

Alex shakes her head. "No," she says.

"Yes," Kara tells her definitively. She can't hear it, but Kara is sure the meaning's clear enough. Just in case, she scoots closer to Lena, and wraps her arms around her in an incomplete hug. Lena freezes up for a second, but then relaxes into it, allowing some of her warm weight to rest against Kara.

Alex is still shaking her head. "Kara, that is just—"

Kara holds up her palm, and Alex shuts up. Kara points to Lena again, and then to her own lips.

Alex's whole body recoils at that. "What?! You _kiss_ that thing?!"

Lena snaps ramrod straight in Kara's arms, her every muscle coiling tight. Kara laughs.

"No!" She shakes her head, grinning at Alex's horror. She points to Lena again, and then mimes talking with her hand.

"I—I see," Alex says shakily, her fingers tightening and relaxing anxiously around the handle of her axe. "You want to talk to me through the beast?"

Kara nods, and turns to Lena. "Tell her your name," she says. "I don't like hearing her call you a beast."

Lena hesitates for a moment.

"Well?" Alex demands of Lena. "What did she say?"

"She won't be able to hear me unless her ear is to the door, or at least some part of her," Lena says to Kara.

"What? Now I can't hear you either. What's going on?"

Kara waves to get Alex's attention, points from her ear to the door and then mimes resting her head.

"You want me to press my ear to door? Why?"

Kara points to her ear again and mimes the shape of waves with her hand.

"Sound waves? To catch the sound waves? This is very bizarre, Kara. All right." Alex presses her cheek to the door, craning her neck awkwardly to look at them. "This is the most embarrassing thing I've done in my entire life. I hope you're appropriately appreciative, Kara."

"Now tell her your name," Kara says to Lena.

"Your sister has asked me to let you know that my name is Lena," Lena tells Alex.

"Thank you for that valuable information," Alex spits at her. She looks at Kara. "Kara, listen to me. If anything it says to me is untrue, if it's not safe for you to talk, give me our sign. It won't be able to tell. I'll protect you. I swear it."

Kara smiles at her. As misplaced as Alex's caution is in this instance, Kara is deeply touched by it. That is the way Alex is. Always ready to do anything to protect her loved ones, and always so smart and considered about it. "I love you," Kara tells her. "I miss you so much."

"Your sister would like you to know that she loves you, and misses you very much," Lena repeats dutifully.

"I know," Alex says, softening. "Me too."

They smile at each other for a moment.

"Now tell me everything that's happened," Alex commands. "And don't forget the sign."

Lena relays the story of the past weeks as Kara dictates it, faithful down to the word. Afterward Alex tells Kara a bit about their neighbors back home, the new contracts she's received.

They talk for hours, the conversation somewhat stilted due to Kara's side of it having to be repeated twice, but Kara has never been more eager to listen to Alex recount the new advancements in steam-powered vehicular technology.

.

.

In the days after Alex's visit, Kara struggles with a wave of loneliness like she's never felt before. Not even those first days when Lena had avoided her made her feel like this. There's a vast empty space in her chest, and it hurts. She misses Alex, even though she's just spoken to her. The understanding of her situation sinks in: even if Alex can afford to visit often, despite being forced to run their business alone, even if she visits every single day, there'll always be a barrier between them. They'll never hug or play-fight with each other again. They can barely even have a proper conversation.

And this is how it's going to be, forever.

Kara can't allow that to happen. She wouldn't be able to bear it.

"There must be a way for me to leave," Kara implores Lena.

Lena shakes her head, scratching at the fur on her arms anxiously. "There's nothing we can do right now."

"Please, Lena, I need to get out of here."

Lena frowns, looking pained. "I'm sorry, Kara."

"Couldn't I make another sacrifice? My arm, my eyes, I'd give anything."

Lena grimaces, baring her long incisors. "The castle already has your blood," she says, like the words hurt coming out of her mouth. "It has enough of your cells to recreate you a hundred times over. There's nothing else it wants from you."

Kara closes her eyes, breathes harshly through her nose. "Lena," she says quietly. "Thank you for your hospitality. You've been… wonderful. But I have to go now."

"What? Kara, no, you can't—"

Lena tries to grab at her, but Kara dodges easily, floating up into the air. "I have supernatural powers, you know," she says mildly as she speeds away from Lena, who's still reaching for her. "I have freeze breath. I think I can make it."

"Kara, please," Lena begs, chasing after her, sprinting on all fours now. "You don't know what you're saying. It won't work."

Kara has reached the front doors; she throws them open with a kick. "I can't stay here forever," she says with a last glance at Lena. "I have to try." She takes a deep breath, releasing it in a gust of frost, and throws herself at the magical barrier at the castle's entrance.

The pain is immediate and overwhelming, and for a split second it's all she can sense. She sees, hears, smells and tastes only the awful, inescapable burning. Heat so overpowering, her ice may as well be steam. And pressure, pressure like she's never felt before, pushing her back. She grabs the edges of the doorframe, the wood splintering in her crushing grip, and screams into the fire.

And then she feels a different kind of pressure enveloping her torso; this one a comfort, a relief from the pain. It tugs at her, insistent but careful, and Kara realizes that Lena has hooked her arm around her, and is trying to pull her back inside.

Lena is strong, stronger than any human, but not as strong as a Kryptonian under a yellow sun. She can't stop her.

"Don't, don't! Kara, please, you'll burn!" Lena sobs. "You'll burn to nothing, I've seen it happen. Please, Kara!"

Kara looks down, at the thick arm wrapped around her stomach, its fur already gone all along one side, leaving rough, bubbling skin exposed beneath it. Kara's own pain is so great she's not even sure it's there anymore. She's not even sure _she's_ there anymore. She lets go of the door's edge. Lets Lena pull her back inside.

Lena is sobbing, loud and wild and messy, holding Kara's burning body fiercely to her. "Kara, Kara, I'm so sorry," she blabbers. "I tried, I was trying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Kara leans into Lena's soft, comforting bulk, closes her eyes, and slides into darkness.

.

.

.

Kara opens her eyes to the now familiar ceiling of the lab. There's light out, so she must have been out for at least a few hours. There's also pain, all over her face and body, but it's significantly lesser than it was before she'd passed out. She notices she's been skillfully wrapped, practically from head to toe, in clean but sharp-smelling bandages. Out of the corner of her eye, Kara can make out a large, fuzzy shape in the corner of the room.

"This is the second time I've awakened, injured, in your lab," Kara croaks. Her voice is gravelly and painful. "Should I read into this?"

"Kara!" Lena makes a low, terrifying sound, a throaty growl that would usually mean you're about to eaten by a bear, most likely. But Kara isn't getting eaten by a bear. She's being enfolded in the gentlest, furriest and most careful hug she's ever experienced.

It still hurts, though. "Ow," Kara says.

Lena immediately releases her and jumps back as if burned. Kara supposes she had been. At the door. Her right arm is covered in thick bandages, similar to Kara's, but significantly less neatly applied. She likely had to do it with her left hand.

Kara's arms are heavy, and it hurts to move them, but she manages to lift them slightly above the bed and flex her fingers at Lena in the universal gesture of 'come here'.

Lena doesn't come. "Come here," Kara says out loud. She forgets sometimes how lacking Lena's communication skills can be.

But Lena just shakes her head. "I got you hurt," she says quietly, "so very badly, Kara."

"I'll heal," Kara says. "I'm already healing. And you're helping. See?" She turns her bandaged arm from side to side, showing off Lena's handiwork.

Lena keeps shaking her head. "The burning... this curse... I understand your healing is accelerated, Kara, but this is magic. It will scar."

Kara tries to laugh, but it really hurts her throat too much to sound happy. "Do you think I'm afraid of scars? I happen to think they suit my image quite well."

But Lena doesn't appear reassured. Instead, she starts crying. "If only I'd told you, none of this would have happened," she says, her voice hitching in the middle.

"Told me? Told me what?"

"I had... I've been having... an idea," Lena says slowly, wiping at her eyes.

"You've been having an idea?" Kara repeats.

"Yes. An idea, for... for maybe, finding a way of getting you out of here." Lena starts pacing, holding her elbow in her hand. "I've been working on it in secret. All failures so far. But I think my idea has merit. It might eventually work. And if it doesn't, I'll find another one, a better one."

"Lena…"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to be disappointed. And I didn't... I didn't want to keep you strung out on hope, eternally waiting for a solution that I may never achieve. But, Kara, listen." She stops pacing, looking beseechingly at Kara. "I will get you out of here. I vow this to you. Please, don't try to go out those doors again. Promise me."

Kara looks over Lena's body, her tense posture, her injured arm. "I will," she agrees. "On one condition."

"Anything," Lena says immediately.

"You tell me about your idea, and you let me help you. And then we implement that idea to get you out of here too." Kara pauses. "So that's three conditions, actually."

Lena's eyes are brimming again. Kara would never have imagined the beast of Luthor Keep would be so easily moved to tears. "You'd do that for me?" she whispers.

Kara snorts. It hurts her throat. "Obviously, yes," she says. "Do you accept my terms?"

Lena nods eagerly, tears soaking into her fur.

.

.

Lena's plan turns out to be to develop a magic-resistant suit. The idea is that the suit will be made of a special substance, vibrating at a frequency that the magic can't register, like a color invisible to the human eye. It sounds somewhat silly to Kara, but admittedly her knowledge of magic is very limited. On the other hand, her trust in Lena is really quite extensive.

After several days of mandated recovery time—at least two days longer than was necessary, honestly—Lena finally agrees to let Kara help her with development.

She leads her up the winding stairs to the east end of the third floor, a portion of the castle Kara's deliberately avoided. They stop in front of a solid, slightly moldy wall.

"Here," Lena says, sweeping her arm, causing the wall to recede, revealing a simple door. "You can come in."

"These are your private chambers, right?" Kara asks.

"Uh, yes. I suppose. I don't really call them that."

Kara chuckles. "You did, that first morning. You asked me not to go in here. Remember? When you were giving me that incredibly permissive set of house rules." Kara smiles at the memory. "You were so nervous, weren't you? You probably thought you were being so assertive, laying down your boundaries. Couldn't even insist on me washing my own dishes."

Lena grins at her. "Well, I hereby revoke my previous decree. You're welcome to enter my _private chambers_."

"I hope you know that now you've invited me, I am going to snoop," Kara informs her.

Lena snorts. "Don't break anything that's not already broken."

That directive proves to be appropriate. There are a lot of broken things in Lena's room. Some of them Kara recognizes as Lena's own handiwork, little failed or unfinished projects. But there are also other things, relics of a different time. A sewing machine, a hunting rifle, an elaborate cosmetics box, a toy train. All of them broken; more notably, all showing signs of being broken deliberately. Kara wonders if it was Lena who wrecked them, but decides not to ask.

In the drawer of a little desk by the window, Kara finds a small, old-fashioned windup clock. It's beautiful, intricately engraved with a floral design, and—it really ticks. This is the first timepiece in the whole castle that Kara has seen which actually works. It shows the wrong time, though, pointing at 2:20, even though the sun is ready to set.

Kara turns the knobs, trying to adjust the time, but it has no effect.

"It's no use," Lena says over Kara's shoulder, approaching her from behind. "This clock runs on magic, not on gears. There's no way to alter its course." She picks it out of Kara's hands, running her thumb over its shiny glass face. "My brother made it," she says, voice soft and fond, but very sad.

"It's very pretty," Kara tells her. "I like it."

Lena smiles at her, but it doesn't seem genuine. "Lex would have loved to hear that." She places the clock back in its drawer and turns away. "Let me show you my schematics."

The rest of the evening is spent working on the suit's prototype, but in the back of her mind, Kara keeps worrying at the opaque mystery that is Lena's family.

.

.

Kara passes by the one working bathroom one morning on her way to the library when Lena calls out to her.

"Kara?" she says timidly. "I'm—Could you—could you help me?"

"What is it?" Kara pokes her head in the bathroom, one eye scrunched shut and squinting with the other, just in case Lena is in some state of undress. Then she remembers the fur. And then she sees Lena's arm; Lena's unwrapped its dressing, revealing the mangled, inflamed skin underneath. Kara winces in sympathy. "Ouch. It looks bad, still. Does it hurt?"

"Not at all," Lena says confidently, and then winces. Kara laughs. "Will you help me reapply the binding? Sorry, I know it's unpleasant. I could do it myself, but I'm not exactly ambidextrous—"

"Stop with all that, of course I will," Kara waves her off, picking up a fresh roll of gauze and the ointment she's helped Lena prepare and bending to inspect Lena's arm.

"Between the two of us, Alex is the better physician," she tells Lena as she lathers the ointment on. "But this looks fairly good to me. Clean, no signs of infection."

Lena nods. "I've taken care of plenty of burn wounds before."

Kara grimaces at that. She doesn't want to think about Lena getting injured. Knowing the consequences of escape, desperate enough to risk it—

Kara shivers, and decides to focus on the task at hand.

"Let me look at you as well," Lena says when Kara is finished. "Any pain recently?"

Kara shakes her head. She glances up, catches her reflection in the mirror, and finds herself stuck on the sight of her face, the pockmarked, uneven skin looking like an ill-fitting mask, a chunk of inexpertly baked dough stretched over her skull. Truly an alien face.

"I never thought of myself as someone who put much stock in physical appearance," she tells Lena. "I used to look down on people who did, considered them shallow. But it's hard, looking at this face. I didn't think it would, but. It hurts. It feels like a loss."

Lena fixes her with a painfully compassionate gaze, and Kara looks away.

"You must think me unbearably petty, complaining about a few scars when you've…" She trails off, thinking better of finishing the thought.

Lena is shaking her head, a deliberate motion, her ears tensing and then easing back. Slowly, slowly, she raises her arm, reaching for Kara. Knuckles just shy of breaching the invisible barrier of Kara's personal space, she stops. "May I?" Lena asks, a murmur.

Kara isn't entirely sure she knows what's being asked, or she does, maybe, she does. Regardless, there's nothing to say but, "Yes."

At the first touch of Lena's hand, Kara shivers. The pads of Lena's fingers are rough against the sensitive skin of Kara's cheek, and her long sharp nails lightly graze the back of her neck, tickling. She strokes her thumb in shallow circles, back and forth, back and forth.

Kara reaches over, mimicking Lena's motions, brushing her fingers over dark, smooth fur, allowing them to slide through it to cup Lena's strong jaw, caressing down along the thick column of her neck. Lena lifts her chin, exhaling a short, approving breath.

They stay still, holding one another's faces in equally steady, gentle grips. Kara feels the intimacy of the moment almost like a palpable presence in the air.

"I know this might be worth rather little coming from me, but I…" Lena says in a sort of tense, almost pained rush; she stops abruptly, takes an audible breath. Her next words are spoken so much more softly. "I think you're beautiful."

And truthfully, to Kara, that isn't worth little at all. Coming from Lena, it's worth… quite a lot.

.

.

Lena wakes her one night with a perfunctory knock on her door and an excited, "Would you like to see my night-blooming cereus? They're blooming. It's night."

So, really, there's nothing Kara can do but rub at her face quickly to wake herself up, and follow Lena to the garden to look at some blooming cacti.

The sight that greets her is certainly striking. The flowers, which Kara has only ever seen as small buds so far, have now unfurled, large and bright and luminous, lending the garden an almost otherworldly glow.

"These are _epiphyllum oxypetalum_ ," Lena says, pointing at a particular flower. "They're really why I woke you. They bloom only very rarely, perhaps once or twice a year. They're endemic to Sri Lanka. I found the seeds some years ago in my father's study."

"They're beautiful."

"It's quite incredible how they flourish so far from native soil," Lena says with a faint, fond smile, and turns to Kara; as she does, her smile grows fonder. "Like you."

Kara feels a pang of some sharp emotion in her chest. Charged with restless, giddy energy, she surges forward to grab Lena by her hips, sweeping her up into the air, throwing her over her shoulder. She weighs thrice as much as Alex, but that's still practically nothing. She's also much bigger, though, her fur obscuring Kara's face completely, and Kara stomps blindly around, laughing and getting Lena's hair in her mouth.

Lena squeals with laughter, kicking her powerful legs. Kara holds on tighter. "You're so strong!" Lena exclaims delightedly.

Kara bends one arm and flexes, though Lena can't see it from this angle, tragically. "I work out."

"Is that right?" Lena asks teasingly.

"Yep! Here, I'll show you, hang on." Kara flips Lena around and balances her easily on one palm, lifting her up until her elbow straightens then lowering her back to shoulder height, and repeats twice.

Lena is laughing unreservedly, a deep, rumbling, lovely sound. "All right, all right! I believe you! You can put me down."

"Hm? I've finally caught me a maiden, and you think I'd so easily give her up?" Kara teases. "I don't think so."

She slings Lena over her shoulder again and kicks off into the air, flying along the spiral staircase to the very top of the castle's highest tower, where the overhead window displays a little shining circle of the starry night sky.

"Here, touch the stars for me, will you?" Kara says. "If there's anyone who might miss the open sky like I do, I know it must be you."

Lena's laughter peters out. She twists in Kara's arms to look from her to the sky. Slowly, she stretches out an arm, pressing her palm to the solid surface of the window, her hand covering it almost completely. Her claws clink against the glass.

Kara settles Lena onto one arm so can cover Lena's hand with her own. Starlight filters through the weave of their interlaid fingers.


	3. Chapter 3

Final part! If you've made it this far, thanks so much. This is the longest thing I've ever written, and I really appreciate you sticking with it. Hope you enjoy the last chapter! Criticism is welcome and encouraged.

Specific **warnings** for this chapter: brief mentions of suicidal ideation and child abuse, and some mild sexual content at the end.

* * *

Weeks pass. Lena and Kara work on the magic-repellent suit, they tend to the garden, they have stink bomb fights in one of the old basement rooms and then have to seal it away forever. Alex visits semi-regularly, every other week or so, keeping Kara up to date on the village gossip and asking for her advice on her newest commissions.

One very specific day, she comes bearing gifts.

"Kara! Kara!" Alex calls through the door. "Lena! Get over here!"

Lena and Kara are in the lab together when they hear it, and they race each other to the door. By some unholy stroke of chance, Lena wins.

"Hello, Alex," Lena greets Alex, trying to disguise her breathlessness, sounding severely constipated instead.

"Hey, Lena," says Alex. "Is Kara there with you?"

"Yes." Lena leans her hands on her knees for a moment, gulping in air. Kara laughs openly at her. "Here, I'll open the door."

"Happy Earth birthday," Alex says to Kara as soon as the doors swing open, revealing her wide grin. "I've brought you a sack of cupcakes. Step back, you two." Alex hefts a large canvas bag, and Kara steps out of the way just in time for it to sail through the doorway and slam straight into Lena's chest.

"Oof," says Lena, gathering the bag in her arms. Alex snorts. "That certainly is a… sack of cupcakes."

"They aren't for you," Alex warns. "You can have a sack of cupcakes once you've traveled thousands of light years to land in a grimy puddle."

"You landed in a puddle?" Lena asks Kara.

"I was asleep at the time." Kara sticks one hand in the bag to fish out a slightly battered but very tasty cupcake. _Ah_ , how she's missed real butter. "I wouldn't have landed in a swamp had I been able to steer, I assure you. I was an accomplished pilot for my age."

"She really did," Alex tells Lena. "Is she telling you what an accomplished pilot she was for her age?"

"Tell Alex these are delicious," Kara says.

"Yes," Lena answers Alex's question. "She also wants you to know that the cupcakes are delicious."

"Of course they are," says Alex. "I baked them without her assistance, after all."

Kara laughs. "Tell her you've been teaching me to cook, and I've gotten really good."

"I've been trying to teach her to cook," Lena repeats. "She's still awful."

Alex smirks. "Tell me about it. She almost burned an entire pot of tea once." Kara makes a face at her.

"You never told me today was your Earth birthday," Lena says to Kara.

"Yep," says Alex, a fond but melancholy look on her face. "Fourteen years ago today, Kara crashed her little spaceship in my family's backyard."

"I see," Lena says with an unreadable look. "Please wait for just a moment."

Alex raises her eyebrows at Kara. Kara shrugs.

After a few minutes, Lena returns with a handful of mismatched candles. "Sorry, I had to search the house for them. I don't have many left. Hold these for a moment." She shoves the candles at Kara; Kara counts fifteen of them.

Lena bends down to the sack of cupcakes and pulls out an armful. She arranges them on the floor in the shape of a star. She picks the candles from Kara's arms and sticks each one into a cupcake, then curls her fingers into a loose fist and exhales a long breath over it, lighting them all up.

"Make a wish," she tells Kara.

Kara can feel Alex's eyes on them as she turns to stare at Lena, touched beyond words. Lena smiles at her so tenderly.

 _I wish I could break her curse_ , Kara thinks, and blows the candles out.

.

.

.

Kara is working on the portions of the suit that require sewing, a feat that despite her surprising finesse, Lena can't manage by herself. Kara is completely immersed in the calming, repetitive task, letting her mind wander to images of roasted lamb chops, greasy fried chicken, juicy sausages from Snapper's butcher shop, holding Lena beneath a starry sky, tall stacks of Alex's spicy bacon…

Suddenly a lump rises from the floor, pushing Kara back, causing her to stumble out the door. The door, which in the next moment groans and shivers and stretches itself shut. Kara jiggles the handle and shoves at it with all her considerable strength; it doesn't budge.

"What the… Lena?" Kara calls out. "Are you doing this? Very funny."

A few moments later, Lena shows up, poking her head out over the staircase railing. She's wearing dirty gloves; she must have just been in the garden. "What? What am I doing?"

Kara gestures at the stuck door, onto which tendrils of wall continue to creep, sealing it more securely. "Would you mind opening it? I was working on something."

Lena frowns. "That's—that wasn't—" She blinks, and shakes her head. "Sure. I'll just." She waves her hand, but nothing happens.

Lena's frown deepens. She plants her feet firmly, raising both hands, fingers tensed, and makes a rending motion. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the walls recede and the door swings open again.

"Thanks," Kara tells her. "See you at dinner?"

"Uh… maybe," Lena says vaguely, looking distracted. "I gotta…" She drifts away without finishing the sentence, but rather than heading back to garden, she goes east, where her chambers are.

Kara stares after her, then shrugs, and gets back to work on the suit.

.

.

Lena knocks on her door one evening, poking her head inside without waiting for a response.

"I have a surprise for you," she says excitedly. "Close your eyes."

"Okay," Kara says dubiously, but obliges.

Lena grabs her by the hand, leading her out of the room. "No, actually, open them," she says. "There's a lot of stairs on the way."

Kara laughs and opens her eyes again. Lena leads her up the western staircase, to the top of the castle's tallest tower.

"All right, _now_ close your eyes, please," she says.

Kara listens intently, trying to catch any clues as to what has Lena so excited, but she can hear nothing out of the ordinary.

Lena lets go of her hand. "You can open them."

Kara opens her eyes, and immediately sees exactly what has Lena so excited. It's rather hard to miss. Right in front of the two of them, taking up the majority of the space in the small circular room, sits a massive, cylindrical metal instrument.

"It's a telescope," Lena says, unnecessarily; it's quite unmistakable.

"When did you—how—" Kara stumbles. "Where did you even get all this _metal_?"

Lena shrugs. "My brother's old projects. And a little good old-fashioned alchemy."

"This… this is…"

Lena grins at her proudly. "Would you like to take a look?"

Shaking with excitement and gratitude, Kara peers into the eyepiece. The telescope Lena has built is a powerful tool, but it can't compare to the ones Kara had in her room back on Krypton. Still, as she looks from the Earth's cratered moon to Mars to Jupiter to Saturn and beyond, Kara feels her vision clouding, tears sliding down her face to soak in her shirt.

She turns to reach for Lena blindly, finds her already behind her, ready to accept her into the snug circle of her arms.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Kara sobs into her chest.

Lena holds on tighter.

.

Watching the stars through the telescope eventually progressed to watching the stars through the ceiling window, sprawled out on their back on the floor. Kara's been naturally migrating toward Lena throughout the last few minutes; eventually Lena takes pity on her and scoops her up with one arm, a sardonic look on her face. Kara curls up happily into Lena's side.

"Will you tell me about your home planet?" Lena asks her, playing idly with the ends of Kara's loose hair.

Kara snuggles closer to her, settling into the inviting warmth of her body. "Krypton," she breathes. "It wasn't a very beautiful place. Not like Earth is. There were no naturally growing trees anymore, not much wild vegetation, and no wildlife at all. There were the oxygen farms, but they were all underwater or in these restricted greenhouses, and you needed special authorization to visit."

"What happened to all of it?"

"Overuse of resources, mostly. An asteroid hit the southern hemisphere once, when I was three or four, and that caused some major habitat disturbances, obviously. Dozens of species went extinct." Kara remembers info files full of three dimensional models of strange, fascinating creatures, all gone forever. "That's just what they taught us at school, though. The reality was that over-industrialization was mostly at fault. We were responsible for our planet's death."

"I'm sorry."

Kara sighs. "I tend to focus on the negative when I think back on it, now. I suppose it's a defense mechanism. When I was younger, all I could see were the good parts."

"Like what?"

"The people," Kara says simply. "My family was my whole world. My family _was_ the whole world. Family was different there. It was everyone you had a connection with, via blood or choice or friendship or some exchange of goods or feelings or information… Everyone you affected or who affected you in some way, they were your family by default. And we were all responsible for each other. Stronger together. It was a better system I think than the one you have here."

"Hm," Lena hums. "I wouldn't really know."

Kara props herself up to look at her. "How long have you been alone, Lena?"

"Nearly ten years, now," Lena replies calmly, sounding almost apathetic. "Tell me more about Krypton."

Ten years. That figure has been brought up before, but it feels as if it's only now registering. Lena's been all alone in this castle, growing vegetables and creating her own self sustaining water system and turning her shit into compost for ten years. Since she was a teenager, since before her brain had even finished developing.

Kara lays her head back down on Lena's chest and closes her eyes. If Lena wants to know more about Kara's home, she can certainly give her that. "As I said, Krypton wasn't as beautiful as Earth," Kara continues, absently drawing random shapes in Lena's fur with her fingertips. "But there was an elegance to it. Everything was carefully designed down to the placement of each recycling receptacle. And the buildings were very different there. Easier and cheaper to build, but much larger and more stable. We lived communally, many families in a house. A building of this size would house twenty families at a minimum. And we had electricity, of course, and centralized plumbing, and there were automated coffee machines and mobile communication devices and infinite data chips. I still remember reading a physical book for the first time. I was so outraged when Eliza told me it was made out of trees."

"It's hard to imagine all that," Lena says, scratching gently at Kara's scalp, making her shiver pleasantly. "It must have been a shock, coming here."

"There was a certain illicit thrill to it at first, I'll admit."

"Illicit? How so?"

"We, Kryptonians, we're not supposed to even visit planets with less industrialized civilizations, let alone live there," Kara explains. "After the last galactic war, strict anti-colonization laws were instated. We lived by them for millennia. I believed in them fiercely. I still do. But I've lived in violation of them for years now. I could never return to even the most remote edges of my galaxy anymore; I'd be caught immediately. Actually, you might find this hard to believe, but I'm a wanted intergalactic criminal."

Lena barks out a delighted laugh. Kara finds she can't help joining her. She'd only ever thought of these things as a tragedy, mourned them privately over and over and over in her head. But sharing them with Lena now, she can't help seeing the humor in them, even through the pain. Told in such context, her life truly sounds like an absurd adventure story, and Kara thinks she's never felt more ownership over it than at this moment.

A comfortable silence develops between them, and Kara feels hesitant to break it. On the other hand, this is the closest she's felt to Lena, physically and emotionally, and it might be the best time to ask about some things she's wanted to know for so long.

"Lena," Kara says carefully. "Would you tell me… why would your mother place a curse on you?"

Lena appears to shrink, curling up into herself, but she draws Kara closer to her at the same time. She takes a deep breath, her broad chest expanding with it, lifting Kara up as well.

"Do you want me to tell you?" she asks, her voice small. "It's not a pleasant story."

"I do," Kara says. "But only if you want to tell it."

Lena exhales, chews at the inside of her mouth. "My family were witch hunters," she says, rubbing her thumb in circles over Kara's back. "Going back centuries. Tracking down rogue magic users and turning them in for bounty. They were all witches themselves, of course. You don't stand much of a chance contending with magic if you've none of your own. I was never very adept at it, though, or interested in the family enterprise. And around my early adolescence, things were beginning to escalate. My mother and brother were becoming more aggressive, using increasingly violent methods, and pursuing targets that posed little danger. Young witches who were playing harmless pranks, older people who had trouble controlling their magic, and the like.

"As I said, I had no significant magical talent of my own. But I had connections, with various covens and other groups. I'd help out with the occasional rescue mission, getting magic users away from hostile situations. I hoped to live my life apart from my family's legacy." Lena looks up at the ceiling, her eyes turning glassy. "But then, I started hearing about Lex. The rumors spread quickly. He'd started killing. Using his victims' magic to fuel his own. I arranged to meet with him in secret, claiming I wanted to help his cause. And then… I leaked his location.

"He's still alive, as far as I know. Deep in a dungeon somewhere. Just like me," she adds with incongruous glee. "Only significantly less comfortable, I'd imagine." Lena sighs. "Anyway. The curse is my mother's retribution for my betrayal."

That kind of cruelty from a parent is unimaginable to Kara. From Lena's dispassionate tone, it clearly isn't unimaginable to her. Kara thinks about the years and years of mistreatment that must have led up to this matter-of-fact acceptance, and her stomach hurts.

She doesn't want to say any of that, though. She wants to do for Lena what she did for her: change the context of her painful memories, making them just a little bit lighter, easier to carry. "Hm," Kara says teasingly. "Lena, you never told me you were a hero."

Lena softens beneath her, snuggling her closer with an appreciative hum. "I'm truly amazed sometimes by the way you see me," she says softly. Kara hooks her leg over Lena's hips, clinging tightly.

They fall asleep cuddled together underneath the stars.

.

.

When Lena presents her with a completed anti-magic suit, Kara is taken completely by surprise. This is the project they've been working on for so many weeks, so of course it makes sense for it to eventually be finished. But somehow, the dots in Kara's mind between _'working to create a tool that will get her out of here'_ and _'having a functioning tool in her hand that will get her out of here'_ hadn't connected until this point. Somehow, she hadn't been mentally preparing herself to actually _leave_.

And now, here she is, holding a thick, garishly colored, presumably magic-repellent suit, realizing that she might be about to walk out of this place.

"Well? What do you think?" Lena asks her with a hopeful smile.

Kara looks from her to the suit. On the front of it, Lena has inexpertly stitched a bold red illustration of the House of El coat of arms.

"It's…" Kara says slowly, "very…"

Lena loses patience with her, rolling her eyes and making shooing motions at her. "Go put it on," she urges.

The suit fits perfectly well, as it should; Kara's made it herself, after all. It doesn't look any less silly with her wearing it, but she supposes fashion isn't the objective here.

Lena smiles at her, looking proud and adoring and wistful. She offers her elbow, and Kara takes it with a smirk and an exaggerated nod. They walk up to the entrance doors. Lena opens them with a gesture, and they stand together, looking at the world outside; outside where there are open skies, and vast distances, and so much life, and so much food. Outside, where Alex is. But then, right here, there's Lena.

"Are you sure this will work?" Kara asks uncertainly.

Lena hums. "Fairly sure," she says. "Maybe stick your hand out first, just in case."

Kara snorts, releasing Lena's elbow and approaching the entrance. Slowly, she reaches out a hand, extending it out into the open air. She retracts it reflexively, jumping back, only then realizing that there was no flash, no fire, no pain. She repeats the experiments, poking out her entire forearm this time.

Same result.

Kara turns to look at Lena. "I'll come back for you," she promises intently. "We'll get you out of here."

Lena smiles at her, though the smile looks somewhat off. "Yes," she says. "I know." She gives her back a light push, encouragement and farewell in one. "Goodbye, Kara," Lena says solemnly. "Find happiness."

Kara turns to catch Lena's hand, holds it in hers for a long moment. "Goodbye," she says, letting go. "For now."

Just as Kara readies to take a step, a tile in the floor shifts, causing her to trip and stumble forward—and then she is outside.

The doors are perfectly silent and swift as they close behind her; she doesn't get the chance to take one last look back.

.

.

Kara doesn't think about intergalactic law, doesn't think about space bounty hunters, doesn't think about a dozen years of secrecy—she takes a long, clear breath of the open air, bends her knees, and flies.

She's _free_ , finally free, and soon Lena will be too, and they will be free _together_ , and maybe Lena would want to live in Kara's room with her for a while, just until she can figure out what she wants to do now, now that she can do _anything_ , and maybe what she'll decide she wants to do will be staying right here, with Kara, and grow things and build things and cook things together, and maybe they'll build their own house, and Kara could take Lena places, show her all the things she'd missed out on—

Lost in jumbled fantasies, Kara almost flies right by her village. She catches herself just in time, backtracking to land safely out of eyesight near the outskirts of town.

The realization finally settles fully: She's going to see Alex. She's going to be able to hug her sister, hold her physically in her arms and talk to her freely with no barriers between them, for the first time in _months._

Every muscle in Kara's body is trembling with uncontainable joy and excitement as she knocks on the Danvers Shop's door.

"Come back in two hours, unless you're planning on paying upfront!" Alex's irate voice calls from the other side.

Kara laughs delightedly. "I think I can make it worth your while!" she calls back.

There's nothing but silence for a moment. Then the door slams open, catching Kara fully in the face. Hopefully the door isn't too badly damaged from the impact. "Kara?!" Alex exclaims, grabbing Kara by the upper arms and shaking her vigorously; Kara graciously moves with her direction. "Are you really here?!"

"Is this what your customer service looks like when I'm not around? It needs some work."

Alex only sobs in response, crushing Kara to her in a scrabbling, desperate hug. Kara closes her eyes, and hugs her sister back.

"How—how did you escape the curse?" Alex stammers over Kara's shoulder, hiccupping between words.

"I'll tell you all about it," Kara promises. "But first, I have got to eat some real food. Please tell me there's meat in this house."

Alex laughs wetly through the tears. They hang onto each other for a while longer.

.

.

Kara spends a blissful week at home, eating animal products and taking walks through the marsh and the forest and helping James with his cattle and hugging her sister whenever she damn well pleases.

And thinking, constantly, of Lena. She sees the first daffodils of spring and she thinks about how Lena likely hasn't seen wildflowers in years. She eats Hank Henshaw's walnut bread and thinks of Lena swapping recipes with him. She works on a self-operating soil watering system with Winn and thinks of how delighted Lena would be at seeing the design. She plays with James's herding dogs and wonders if animals would get along with Lena or run away, terrified; both mental images make her laugh, fond and somewhat… longing.

She wants Lena here, right now, sharing all these small moments and mundane pleasures with her. She knows Lena has to work on her own magic-repellent suit or whatnot, that it's more complicated for her, being the subject of the curse rather than random collateral, but her yearning knows no patience, and can't be reasoned with.

On the ninth day of Kara's return to her life, she dons her cloak and packs some snacks and waves at Alex.

"Off to see your lady?" Alex asks dispassionately.

"Hm?" Kara frowns, quirks her mouth in an embarrassed half smile. "I suppose. Yes."

Alex nods and turns back to her bubbling alembic. "About damn time," she mutters.

.

.

Kara runs all the way to Luthor Keep. Now that she's decided to visit, she finds herself buzzing with impatience; she can't believe she's waited eight days to do this. She wants to see Lena, she wants to hold her, she wants.

She passes through the front gates in a flash and slams into the castle's doors. Now that she's been inside and left, the impact of her body leaves no mark on the fragile wood whatsoever. The magic's cast her out.

Kara bangs her open palms on the doors instead. If she can't muscle through, she can at least make some noise. "Lena!" she bellows. "Hey, Lena! Open the door!"

"Hello, Kara," Lena's voice finally greets her. "I'm glad you're here."

"I'm glad I'm here too," Kara tells her with a wide grin. "Can you open the door?"

Lena ignores her request. "Kara, there's something I want to tell you," she says, sounding strange and vague.

"Okay," Kara says slowly, her enthusiasm melting away like salt-doused snow. Something about Lena's tone doesn't bode well. "Could you open the door first?"

"No," Lena says bluntly. "Kara, I must ask you not to respond to my confession until it is complete, whatever you may hear. This… this might be shocking to you, Kara. If so, I apologize. But I feel you should know. I want you to know. And now is the time."

Lena takes a deep breath, but doesn't continue. Kara's arms break into gooseflesh, the fine hairs standing on end. This doesn't bode well at all. "I promise," Kara says. "Go on."

"Kara, I, we've…" Lena says, stumbling over the words. "These, these months we've spent together… have been the happiest of my life. I've felt more joy and curiosity and comfort in that brief period of time than all the rest of my years combined. Tilling soil by your side was more thrilling to me than a grand adventure to a foreign galaxy could be. Whenever you touch me, I—" Lena stops, taking a long, trembling breath. "Kara," she says simply, "I'm desperately in love with you."

The relief that fills Kara at those words is overpowering. She had braced herself for something horrible, an incurable illness or a second curse or a revelation that Lena had been lying all this time, that there was no curse all along or that their relationship was a mere manipulation; and here not only were those fears unfounded, but in place of despair she's been offered a gift. The gift of her feelings, reciprocated.

"Oh," Kara breathes, overwhelmed with relief and giddiness, impatient for Lena to be done so she can tell her how absurdly, deliriously happy Lena's words have made her. "Is that all?"

"No. There's something else I must tell you." Lena's voice is so faint, brittle; even with her sharp hearing Kara finds herself pressing her ear against the door hard enough to be uncomfortable, desperate not to miss a word. "Remember that pretty windup clock you found in my room?"

"Yes," Kara replies, thoroughly confused.

"Well, the winding is nearly undone," Lena says, that fragile tension in her voice still apparent. "It's almost my birthday. I'll be twenty five."

"Yeah?" says Kara, her worry mounting. "I'll be twenty seven in four months."

Lena laughs. "Good. I hope you'll get to be a hundred, in seventy three years and four months."

"Lena, what exactly are you saying?"

Lena sighs, harsh and rattling. "I never told you about it, I specifically avoided it actually, but there's a second clause to the curse. This one courtesy of my brother. It's both kinder and crueler than my mother's original vision." Little but little, Kara's earlier relief hardens into horror as Lena's words continue to filter through the door. "You see, it was Lex who made that clock. He made it to put a deadline on my curse. And… on my life, as well. It's my twenty fifth birthday, as you've probably guessed."

Kara feels as if her veins have frozen over, even as her heart thumps in her chest, hard, harder, strong enough to feel down to her fingertips.

"But there was a condition, a little saving grace," Lena continues, in her storyteller voice, wretchedly serene. "If I were to fall in love by that time, and find someone who would love me equally in return, and share a single kiss with that person, the curse would be lifted. Corny, isn't it? True Love's Kiss. Very unlike the both of them. I don't know why he chose this particular path. Perhaps he thought it'd be funny."

"No," Kara whispers through frozen lips.

"I suppose Lex's curse was rather generous, considering," Lena says with a light, fake laugh. "It gave me until my twenty fifth birthday to find someone who'll have me. He knew I'd be a late bloomer, ha."

"It's not funny," Kara mutters.

"Unfortunately for me, forty years likely wouldn't be enough to find _that_ undiscerning an individual." Lena laughs again, louder.

"It's not funny!" Kara snaps, louder as well. "How can you be so flippant about something—about—"

"About what a great _catch_ I am?" Lena suggests in that same infuriatingly glib tone. "Or did you mean about my own approaching demise? Too long coming, honestly."

"Stop it!" Kara orders. "Just, stop! Didn't you just profess to love me? How can you claim to love me and abandon me so readily?"

Lena appears to be shocked into silence. She's stopped laughing, and says nothing.

"Don't die," Kara tells her, stern but sniffling. "I don't want you to die. You're not any kind of catch. You're not a damned fish. You're kind and caring and hardworking and brilliant and inventive and you're a really good cook and you're… you're Lena. And I care about you, so much. I—" Kara grits her teeth, breathing harshly through her nose. "Please, Lena, don't die. Just open the door. Let me save you."

"How?" Lena asks. "I cannot leave this house, and you cannot enter. Even if you were to—even if—There's nothing you could do."

"Weren't you going to make another suit? Just a part of it will do, just to get—I just need you to get your head out the door—"

"The suit?" Lena laughs bitterly. "The suit, huh? The suit is useless, Kara. It does nothing. Absolutely nothing. It doesn't even look that good." She sighs. "I lied to you. Sorry about that."

"What? Then how did I—"

"Your freedom," Lena says, solemn and grim, "was my sacrifice."

Kara is stunned into furious silence. She feels on the very brink of an explosion. Lena continues, unwary.

"It sounds awful, doesn't it? Your happiness is my utmost misery. I started to suspect it might be the case when I began to realize the depth of my feelings for you. I had a theory, you see. What is the one thing the castle wants most of all? For the curse to remain intact, of course. At that point, with my feelings of intense love for you, you were the single greatest threat to the curse's integrity. I suspected that if you were to just step out the door, you would be permitted, even encouraged, to leave. I was hesitant to test this theory, of course, after—the previous attempt. What if my feelings weren't as true as I thought? What do I know of love, really? But as time went on it became gradually clearer that the castle wanted you gone. And so I lied. I claimed to have perfected the suit, when in reality you needed no such silly costume to be able to leave." Lena pauses to take a deep breath. "It was easier than admitting that losing you would be price and purchase all in one."

And at that, Kara has reached her limit. "Lena, you _fucking_ —conceited, oblivious—we could have _broken_ it!" she snaps. "If you'd just told me about it, we could have broken this thrice damned curse! And now you're going to _die_ , just because you couldn't conceive of the possibility of a single person _loving you!_ "

"What was I suppose to do?!" Lena demands, equally heated. "Tell you you'd better kiss me, or I'll die? Tell you if you ever wanted to be free, the price is your damned _body_?"

"The price isn't my body! You said it yourself, the price is my fucking _love!_ And image that, it's free! It's completely fucking free! I couldn't help it if I tried! Lena Luthor, you obtuse horse's ass, you're good and wonderful and breathtaking and I love you!"

Her proclamation is met with complete and utter silence. Kara stands there, huffing and trembling in front of the Luthor Keep's double doors, her face red and puffy from her tears, willing the woman she loves to accept her own worth.

Lena's unsteady breaths are thunderous to Kara in the silence between them. She wishes her words had a physical presence, that Lena could feel them and carry them with her and know they are real.

"I—I—" Lena finally stammers, breathless.

"I know," Kara says, gentling her voice, pressing both open palms to the door, yearning for some tactile connection between them. "It's all right."

"Do you… do you really?" Lena asks hesitantly.

"Do I really love you? I love you so much I think I might broadcast it for miles around," Kara says. "I was certain you suspected, at least."

"I had no idea," Lena mutters.

"Evidently." Kara sighs. "Lena, sit down," she says, getting them back to the somewhat pressing issue at hand. "We're going to solve this."

"Kara—"

"We're going to sit here," Kara cuts her off implacably, "and we're going to solve it. Like two Rao damned _scientists_."

Kara hears Lena gasp. And then she hears a loud _thump_. Hopefully the sound of Lena's hairy butt hitting the damn floor.

Kara slides down to the ground as well, and presses her ear back to the door.

"Now," she says. "We both know particles never physically _touch_. Feeling is nothing but electromagnetic force. So. The question is: How do we meet the criteria of a kiss without touching?"

They're both silent for a long moment. Then Kara hears a shuffle as Lena makes some sudden movement. "Kara," she says, a loaded quality to her voice.

"What?"

"It's so obvious," Lena mutters. "I can't believe—You were right. I was so caught up in this tragic narrative I've built for myself, I didn't stop to think. There's clearly a solution to this problem. Kara. How do we get particles to interact with each other across a barrier of magic and space?"

Kara takes in a thrilled breath. Of _course._ "Quantum entanglement," she whispers.

An ecstatic laugh issues from the other side of the door. "Quantum entanglement."

.

.

The days that follow are a frantic, exhilarating blur. Kara has never worked with quite this combination of single-minded focus, relentless drive and overwhelming affection. Lena is a fantastic collaborator. She finds the most creative solutions to unforeseen problems, she works in utter silence when Kara has trouble concentrating, she asks the right questions to rouse Kara's inspiration. They work together like they hadn't ever before, not even when making the suit; separated by a thick magic door, but completely in tandem.

They have to contend with the issues of their lips not being made of photons, of organic matter being complex and unwieldy, of how to create a connection between their particles in the first place. They approach every issue patiently, a step after another, working incrementally forward until slowly, slowly, every snag begins to untangle.

Kara refuses to leave her seat in front of Luthor Keep's doors while they work, and so Alex is recruited as a 'not-so-glorified pack mule', as she calls it, trekking back and forth between the castle and the shop, bringing Kara supplies and tools and raw materials, some of which Kara chucks over to Lena through the door. Whatever goes in can't come back, but at least they can have this sort of limited cooperation.

Kara eats while she works, chewing on the various dried meats and fruit and crackers Alex shoves at her, barely tasting the food. Lena and her take only short breaks to pee and nap at irregular hours, heedless of the position of the sun.

Finally, they're finished. Kara holds in her hand a heavy, convoluted spherical device, humming with both magical and electrical energy. She skims furiously through her scribbled calculations, reading over them once, then again and again, looking for some terrible flaw that would sabotage their entire plan, finding none.

"We did it," Kara whispers. "I think we really did it."

Lena grunts. She sounds exhausted. "Maybe. Won't know until we try, I suppose."

Kara doesn't know how she can sound so weary when Kara feels this _giddy._ "Open the door, Lena," she asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I want to see you."

"All right," says Lena. "Step back."

Kara moves away, clutching the device tightly to her chest, as Lena finally, finally opens the doors. They stare at each other for a long moment. The corresponding machine Lena's created looks ever so subtly distinct from Kara's, and appears much smaller, held easily in one of Lena's hands. Seeing it, Kara is confronted with the reality of what they're about to attempt.

A light snow begins to fall. It must be the last of the season. Kara hadn't even noticed the clouds.

"I love you, Lena," she tells her intently. She can see Lena's lips move to form words in response, but she can't hear them.

"On three," Kara says. "One… two… three."

Kara quickly presses her lips to the device, closes her eyes, and switches it on.

For a long moment, absolutely nothing happens. Snow continues to fall, cooling the sliver of Kara's uncovered scalp where her hair parts. The wind disturbing the trees and whistling through the cracks in the stone fence is the only source of sound, apart from Kara's own beating heart. All Kara can see is the reddish darkness of the back of her eyelids. All she can feel is the chill of the air and snow, the weight of the haphazard device in her hands, the beat of her own heart.

And then, she senses it—the barest, lightest pressure against her lips. She inhales sharply through her nose, tilting her head forward, chasing the sensation, moving her lips slightly, desperate for more. She feels a satisfying, reciprocating pressure for one heady, dizzying moment, and then—it's gone.

Kara opens her eyes, and she's standing a foot away from Lena, not truly touching at all, an unbearable distance—but Lena, Lena steps forward, her bare foot stumbling, unsteady over the threshold, over and _out_ , tread muted on the packed earth, her bare, smooth, humanoid foot—

Lena starts to fall, and Kara catches her easily by the waist, suddenly so much shorter—

"It worked," Lena murmurs faintly, in that same lovely cadence, the very same light accent, but such a different voice. "I can't believe… it worked."

Kara looks up at her face. The girl from the pictures stares back at her, older and rougher and so much more beautiful. But her eyes are Lena's eyes, expressive like no painting can capture. "Lena," Kara whispers.

"Yeah," Lena says with a little croaky, charming laugh. She slithers her arms behind Kara's back and presses one at her spine, between her shoulder blades, steadying and possessive. Kara trembles. "Yeah. I'm here, my love. My savior."

Kara molds into her, crushing Lena's body to her own, holding her captive within her embrace. She can finally wrap her arms completely around the whole width of Lena's body, finally hold her like she's wanted to for months now.

Lena looks up at her, her new, expressive face filled with tender adoration. "Kara," she says softly, "may I…?"

Kara doesn't bother answering, tilting her head to capture Lena's lips in a firm kiss instead. Lena opens her mouth, a beautiful, breathy sound escaping her, and Kara thinks she might lose consciousness from the sheer sensory and emotional weight of the moment. She hopes she doesn't. She wants to experience every second of this, and hoard the memory afterward like a treasure.

A deep shiver runs through Lena's frame, and Kara becomes conscious of how cold it would be here for a barefoot, average sized, furless human standing ankle deep in the snow. She reluctantly lets go of Lena's lips with one last gentle nibble.

"Let's get you inside before you freeze to death," Kara says. "Wouldn't that be a waste of a curse-breaking quantum kiss." She crouches down to grab Lena beneath her knees and shoulders, lifting her up to carry in her arms, making her giggle.

"Don't go back in there," Lena requests. "I don't want to see the inside of that place ever again."

Kara scoffs. "Go back in that old dump? Of course not," she says. "I'm taking you _home_."

Lena rests her head against Kara's shoulder, burrowing her face into her neck. "Mm," she mutters, taking a long inhale of Kara's skin. Kara recalls Lena's initial distaste for her scent with a fond smile. "I'd like that."

"Hold on tight," Kara advises. She bends her knees, braces herself, and pushes up into the sky.

.

.

Kara lands just a little too hard outside the door of her apothecary shop, kicking up a circle of dust around her. She doesn't particularly mind the impact, but Lena cringes in her arms and Alex, storming furiously out of the shop with her protective gloves still on and a bag of buckthorn in her hand, doesn't look too pleased.

"Hey! What are you doing! You can't fly out here in the middle of the day!"

Kara walks up to her, adjusting Lena in her arms. "Alex," she tells her sister calmly, "I've just broken _two_ evil witches' curses, using science and the power of true love. Do you think I'm afraid of some old space bureaucrats? Let them come."

Alex scowls. "It's a good thing that while you were gone, I discovered something very interesting about Hank Henshaw." At Kara's curious look, Alex waves her hand. "I'll tell you later. Hi, Lena. You look balder."

"Alex," Lena responds, giving her a much more dignified nod than Kara thinks she should be entitled to, seeing as she'd just been not-so-discreetly feeling up Kara's deltoids.

"I assume you want me to stay at Hank's tonight?" Alex asks Kara.

Lena immediately flushes bright red. Kara laughs. "Yes, please," she tells Alex. "You can leave right now."

Alex sighs, walking into the house to deposit her gloves and bag of buckthorn, and returning with a pillow and a dagger in hand for some reason.

"What are those for?" Kara asks her, bewildered.

Alex smirks at her. "Super special secret training," she says. "Have fun, you two."

Kara shakes herself, turning to enter her home for the first time in months. The familiar fit of the doorjamb in her hand sends a pleasant warmth through her belly.

"Here we are," she says, walking into the main space which functions as living room, kitchen and workspace.

Lena breathes in deeply, tightening her hold on Kara's shoulders. "I can't believe this is all real," she murmurs.

Kara looks around at the small cluttered space, its every horizontal surface covered in an herbalist's paraphernalia. It doesn't seem particularly impressive to her, but she supposes any change in scenery would be thrilling to someone in Lena's circumstances.

"Can you imagine?" Lena continues, with an unbelieving, huffy laugh. "Ten years locked up alone, except for the rare foolish traveler, and out of nowhere, in walks the woman of my dreams."

Kara grins goofily at that. "I think I just might be able to imagine," she says, walking into her room and depositing Lena on her bed. "Seeing as I'm the woman in question."

Lena makes an odd sound in her throat, reaches out, and pulls Kara firmly on top of herself.

Kara laughs joyfully, wedging her hands in between the mattress and Lena's back to press her close. "Aren't I heavy?" she asks into Lena's hair.

"Mm, you're really heavy," Lena mumbles. "It's nice."

Lena turns her head to nuzzle at Kara's face, rubbing her nose and her mouth over Kara's cheek, her jaw. She finds Kara's lips and nips at them, making the most exciting, whiny little noises. Kara closes her eyes and sucks Lena's lip into her mouth, hungry for more contact, more texture, more Lena. Lena whimpers, and Kara bucks on top of her, her breathing ragged. She's never felt more attracted, more connected to another person before.

She releases Lena's mouth to look at her familiar-unfamiliar face.

"Mmm don't stop," Lena protests.

"Not stopping," Kara assures her, extricating one arm from beneath Lena's body to brush her thumb reverently over one thick, expressive eyebrow. "Just want you to know how I love you."

Lena closes her eyes, her breathing heavy, roughly untucking Kara's shirt and sliding her hands beneath it, caressing up and down Kara's back and sides, tracing over her burn scars quite ungently. Kara is struck with a deep need to reciprocate; she skims her fingers up Lena's thighs, dragging the hem of her ugly robe along, tugging on it. Lena directs Kara to lean back with a hand on her shoulder and strips off the robe in one clean motion, immediately tugging Kara back into a kiss as Kara runs her hands eagerly over the newly revealed skin.

They touch, learning one another's bodies, luxuriating in the simple sensuality of the contact, perhaps for hours. Kara can't be sure. At some point they fall asleep, tangled in each other as intricately as a cross vine growing around a pine tree.

.

.

Alex returns the next morning, takes a single step into the shop, and leaves again.

Which is just as well; it leaves Kara with the dairy- and egg-free French toast Lena makes later all to herself.


End file.
